Blue Oyster Cult has had a long, successful career and has had much more commercially successful albums than their first… but I think their debut album was by far their best.
Better than his second, Bat Out of Hell? Me and the critics would not agree.
Television - Marquee Moon
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
Definitely those. One can make an argument for The Clash, as well, although I personally would give London Calling the nod for best of oeuvre.
Van Halen pretty much peaked with Van Halen.
You can look at the early history of Miles Davis recordings and make the case that Birth of the Cool was not his first album. But in spite of the landmark Kind of Blue a decade later and other monster sellers, I can’t honestly say that anything he did afterward surpassed BotC.
YMMV
Yeah, and for this, I’d definitely say Southern Harmony and Music Companion is where they hit their stride and find their voice. The first album is pretty good, too, but it still sounds “young,” like a band on the cusp of greatness, but still in the last stages of woodshedding. Not that it’s sloppy or anything like that–I just still hear a band that is a little green and gelling together their sound and songwriting, which they nailed on the next album.
The first 2 that popped into my head.
I like a lot of Counting Crows’ other stuff, too, but August and Everything After is one of my favorite albums of all time.
I disagree about Liz Phair; I like random songs on all her albums.
I think Oasis’s *Definitely Maybe *is better than What’s the Story Morning Glory, and it was obviously downhill from there.
I must say that Are You Experienced? remains, for me, the essential Jimi Hendrix album. Ditto for It’s A Beautiful Day’s eponymous debut, and I Just Can’t Stop It by the (English) Beat. Also Moby Grape. (Yeah, I guess those aren’t all “enduring”.)
The Doors’ debut LP was incredible, and while I wouldn’t rate it as clearly their best, I’m not sure they clearly bettered it either. Ditto for Ramones, Talking Heads '77, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and the Band’s Music from Big Pink. I also like the Allman Bros.’ first album about as much as anything else they ever did.
King Crimson… it’s very hard to make a decision, as their records were so different, but there’s something about that first album (In the Court of the Crimson King) that’s just magnificent.
Patti Smith’s horses is a landmark recording of its time, head and shoulders above her later stuff.
Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is often touted as being in a league of its own, never bettered by him. I’m not familiar enough with his later output to know how true this is.
Chicago - Chicago Transit Authority?
The early ones were pretty strong, but the first was probably the best…
Cyndi Lauper - She’s So Unusual another close call with her 2nd album, True Colors, but I think it wins… it certainly has more hits on it.
Richard Davis’s Astral Weeks featuring Van Morrison on vocals, is more like it.
Moondance was just as good as Astral Weeks, but all those early Van Morrison albums were great - Saint Dom’s, Hardnose the Highway, Veedon Fleece, Into the Music.
Recovering the Satellites was just as good.
I loved Diver Down.
So do I. In your opinion, which album would you say is better than Exile in Guyville? Whip Smart and whitechocolatespaceegg had their moments, but her debut was absolute perfection and one of the best and most important albums of the 90s.
“Best seller” and “Best album” are 2 different things. You can’t really compare REM from the (then) tiny IRS with REM from Warner.
Their first 4 albums are their best - Murmur, Reckoning, Fables, Pageant. If you go to the trouble of buying those then you might as well buy Dead Letter Office and then there’s no reason to ever listen to anything REM ever did after that.
Marshall Crenshaw. IMHO none of his later albums came up to the level of pop perfection that is his first, self-titled album.
I don’t think the sales prove which album is best. I was saying I hadn’t heard this consensus that Murmur is the best album, and mentioned the sales as a data point. There are some very good songs on Murmur (I especially liked Pilgrimmage), and I got very into Lifes Rich Pageant four or five years ago. I think Automatic for the People is better than either.
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced
Not quite fair since a portion of the band died just 4 years later, but by then they had released 5 albums none of which is quite as good as Pronounced.